I am fascinated by story structure. That’s why I’ve created my own “day job” as an editor and development consultant, where I can spend most of my work life thinking about and discussing narrative structure. I totally get how this stuff is boring to other people, but I enjoy puzzling out a story the same way some folks enjoy puzzling out a… I dunno, a puzzle or something. This love I have for breaking down story into structural components helped when the notion of tackling something as sprawling as “The Elect Stories” started to feel daunting. (Okay, okay, it can still feel that way sometimes.)
I’m a firm believer in the three act dramatic structure first posited by Aristotle and since codified by folks like Robert McKee and Blake Snyder into “essential beats.” These are not arbitrary rules. They are patterns of cause and effect that seem to reflect the way humans are hardwired to perceive reality. When stories don’t follow these rhythms, they don’t satisfy, they fail to ring true. In 25 years as a script editor, I have yet to find a flawed script whose ”plot holes” could not be accurately diagnosed with the application of these structures. So when I decided to write “The Elect Stories,” I started with the structure. Here’s how I broke things out:
First, I charted the “12 essential beats” of the overarching story. After that it was easy to recognize the breaks between the story’s three acts, each of which I thought of as a “book.” I then broke each book down into its own three act structure, with each act containing 4 of the 12 beats. Thus, “The Elect Stories” is told in 3 volumes of 12 chapters each for a total of 36 exciting installments. Wanna get really fractal about it? When I write each chapter, I likewise break it down into 3 acts of 4 beats each, and I tend to think of scene structure that way, too. I primarily do this because it is a whole lot less scary for me to write a project as complex and detailed as “The Elect Stories” in small, manageable steps, but the sense of symmetry and self-consistency that this structure provides is a side-effect that I’m glad others can enjoy. Maybe isn’t immediately noticed by the vast majority of readers, but if I’ve done my job (a big if, I know) it’ll just feel right.
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